


yours to the end and back again

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: Quantico High [1]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M, HSAU, teen!AU, tumblr prompt fills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:39:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1505660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Remind me why I’m sneaking through your window when your security guy doesn’t care?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	yours to the end and back again

**Author's Note:**

> ***Technically the characters depicted in this fic are underage. Some of the things that are both depicted and implied may not be your cup of tea.

Emily doesn’t really expect friends when she moves back to the US. High school chews people like her up and spits them back out again without compassion or sympathy. All she’d wanted to do that September was finish her courses and get out to bigger and better things. 

And now she knows why people say things happen when you don’t expect them to. 

It hadn’t really started off as much. There’s a blond in her English class that can’t get a handle on Shakespeare and it’s really no problem for Emily to offer help. Turns out she also gets tutored in math from a genius and that turns into a regular lunch thing. The computer nerd they somehow pick up in politics makes Emily laugh so hard with her deadpan humour that it really shouldn’t be as much of a surprise when they end up hanging out more often. 

They get other stragglers too (turns out JJ - the blond - has a college boyfriend that comes to visit, and apparently once you get one jock, others think you’re okay - that’s how they pick up Derek) and they end up as one of the most ragtag groups the school has ever seen. None of them make sense together, and maybe that’s why it works. 

The biggest change though, the biggest thing that Emily most certainly had not seen coming, was Aaron Hotchner. 

To top it off, it had been the stupidest cliché she has legitimately ever lived (and she’d been pregnant at 15 and essentially kicked out by her Catholic church in Rome, so as tropes go, she’s kind of on the ball) because he just runs smack into her one day. She topples and he goes with her, spreading books and papers everywhere. After that, it had been about almost haunting her in the halls before she’d threatened to kick his ass. 

They’ve been inseparable, all year, and she’s kind of head over heels for him. But that’s made the summer almost harder to bear. She can’t honestly say she knows what she’s going to do in the fall. She’s applied to colleges, fine arts degrees mostly, though there’s a really cool linguistics program she thinks she might take, but he knows. He knows and then some. He’s going to law school, he’s going to prosecute. She doesn’t know where it comes from (because everyone has an origin story, don’t lie) but she admires his passion for it. 

What it means is that the Ambassador has been a little less that welcoming to the idea of Emily having someone she spends so much time with. Emily’s not stupid enough not to see the multi-fold issue. Her pregnancy in Rome, her less than stable lifestyle, her pregnancy in Rome, it’s all piled up to ensure that the Ambassador has very little trust for her daughter’s judgment. Plus, Emily really, really doesn’t want to follow her mother into politics. The Ambassador finds this unacceptable. Emily couldn’t give a shit. 

But it means the Ambassador has banned Aaron from the premises. 

Yeah, like Emily’s going to listen to that. Which explains why he’s shuffling through her window at the back of the estate. She has no doubt Joe knows he’s here, but she and Joe, well they have an understanding. 

"Remind me why I’m sneaking through your window when your security guy doesn’t care?" Aaron asks, dusting off his polo as best he can. 

"This." She kisses him, long and hard and he’s got her backed up to the edge of her bed before they break apart. "And my mom’s home."

"I thought she was in Kiev."

"So did I," Emily agrees. "But it got rescheduled or-" She kisses him again, cutting herself off because she doesn’t care. The only thing that sucks is that the Ambassador is home. Why she’s home is entirely irrelevant. 

He backs her onto the bed, climbs on top of her. They’ve done a lot of this over the summer too, whenever they can snatch a moment. He’s been… Something else though because Emily’s still more than a bit traumatized over the whole last time she let herself just have sex thing. But this, this she can handle. 

"Did they send you your acceptance letter?" he asks as he breaks away from her mouth. It’s the same thing he asks her every day. He’s the only one she’s told about the linguistics program. 

"Dottie hasn’t brought the mail yet," Emily replies breathlessly. She presses hisses across his cheeks, his nose, his forehead and he chuckles. 

"You could go get it."

"And risk another lecture? No thanks. I already snuck down the back stairs for breakfast and lunch."

He sighs and cradles her face in his palms. “Em, she just cares.”

"She cares about my getting in the State Department. She cares about me running for Congress and Senate and even the Presidency in a few years. Says she paved the way for it."

They’ve had this argument a hundred times too. 

"Sweetheart, she’s your mother. She’ll be happy with whatever you choose."

"Not all of us have supportive parents," she says and shakes her head when he opens his mouth to argue. "I didn’t want to do this with you here. I don’t want to have this argument with you. It’s only a few weeks then we both go our separate ways. Can we just… take advantage?" 

She plays with the edge of his polo as she says it and he knows exactly what she’s angling for. She’s voiced her opinions on it a million times, said that maybe she’d be ready by the time they split, but he doesn’t like it. It doesn’t feel right. He doesn’t want to push her or rush her because he doesn’t ever want to let her go. So it doesn’t matter that they’re going to different colleges, that they’re about to be miles and miles apart. What matters is her. 

"Your mother’s home," he says, even as he kisses her again, even as he lets her tug his shirt up. They’ve done the shirtless thing, it’s playing below the belt he’s been reluctant about. She has been too though, so they both know it’s the right decision.

"She’s not going to come up here. She never does when we’re fighting. She likes having the upper hand."

He doesn’t think that’s true, but he doesn’t argue with her. He thinks that maybe Emily doesn’t realize how much power she holds with her mother, thinks that maybe Emily doesn’t see how much it matters to the Ambassador that her daughter is happy. He also doesn’t think that Emily sees her mother is terrified of letting Emily go. But it’s not his place to say, so he kisses her harder, lets his hands snake beneath her shirt to brush against her stomach. 

He’s about to tug her shirt over her head (he loves that bit, the way her hair falls after it’s out of the shirt, the way it bounces over her shoulders before it fans against the pillows) when the doorknob turns. 

"Emily what is this package from-"

Emily reacts. She shoves Aaron, hard, and he tumbles off the bed. He’s not sure what keeps him from the undignified sound he knows crawls up his throat, but that doesn’t stop the groan. Emily’s floor is not soft.

The Ambassador eyes her daughter, the glare harsh. “What is this?!”

"This is my boyfriend, Mother. You’ve met him."

"He is not to be here. We talked about this."

"No, you talked. I didn’t get a say. You can’t just ban him, I’m eighteen."

"And proven you can be trusted."

Emily’s stomach lurches. Every time her mother brings it up, it hurts more than the last. “I’m going away to college in a month.”

"Not this college."

The package the Ambassador drops on her bed makes Emily’s breath catch. She knows that logo and she knows what the big envelope means.

"I got in?" she breathes, because she can’t help it. She’s played it close to the vest but she wants this. She wants it so bad. Her eyes come up, dart between Aaron and the Ambassador as her fingers shake. "I got in?"

"Open it, sweetheart," Aaron urges, because it’s obvious the Ambassador won’t be doing so. "You won’t know until you tear that envelope open."

Emily’s hands shake viciously as she tears at the package and it means she misses the very significant look Aaron exchanges with the Ambassador. She actually almost rips the glossy college folder in her haste to get to the letter. 

"Ms Emily Prentiss," she reads. "We are pleased to congratulate you on your acceptance to our linguistics program. Aaron!"

She launches herself off the bed and, with her head buried in her boyfriend’s shoulder, she completely misses the way hurt flows across her mother’s face. The Ambassador’s face is impassive when Emily finally turns towards her. 

"We’ll talk about this later," she says, her nose rising into the air. Then her eyes dart to Aaron. "That too." 

She closes the door without another word and Emily immediately turns back to him. “I did it.”

"Of course you did, sweetheart," Aaron tells her, kissing her nose. 

And later that night, after he’s left and she’s had dinner with her mom, she calls him because her mother’s changed her mind. Emily’s not entirely sure why, she’s also not sure she really cares. The point is, she’ll be studying linguistics in the fall and she has him and for the first time since she actually cared, she feels like she’s making the right choices. 

And it feels phenomenal.


End file.
